Monday, October 13, 2014

On a morning not long ago, chaya cup in hand, I was getting my regular Kafila fix, when I
paused mid-click. What caught my eye was a headline with ‘Gods, Own and Country’
in it. Now that combination of words could only mean one thing — a piece on
Kerala. It helped though that right below the headline was a picture of a Kathakali
artist in sthree vesham or female
makeup.So I dived right into the
essay on Thiruvananthapuram by Professor Mohan Rao. The first couple of
lines had me grinning with delight for he wrote of his “four wonderful days” in
the city, one that’s been my home for much of the past three decades.I was so pleased by this that I skimmed the next few lines. Only to
be stopped in my tracks, almost spilling some scalding chaya on myself in the process, by the Professor’s declaration that
“… Ganesha is not a deity widely worshipped
in Kerala.”Now I’m no expert in Hinduism, but I do know that my extended, and very Malayali, family used to perform a ‘Ganapathy homam’ on a
number of specific occasions; before moving into a new house, for instance. And
this has been going on for decades. I also remember that both my grandmothers
had an image of Ganapathy in their personal pooja
spaces. Just to make sure that I hadn’t got my wires crossed, I checked with a
couple of Malayali Hindu friends who confirmed that Ganapathy and Ganapathy homams were an integral part of their
families’ religious landscape too.In fact, virtually every temple I’ve been to across Kerala has invariably
had a Ganapathy shrine within. Why, the Sree Padmanabhaswamy
temple — arguably Thiruvananthapuram’s most well known
place of worship — is home to the ‘Agrashala
Ganapathy’. And around the
corner from the Padmanabhaswamy temple is the ‘Pazhavangadi
Maha Ganapathy Temple’. I believe it has
been around for a couple of hundred years; since 1795 at the least. And for as
long as I can remember, it is to Pazhavangadi Ganapathy that many Hindu
denizens of the city, and from elsewhere, have turned to to smooth over
obstacles or entreat a shot or two of good fortune.

So why, I wondered, did the Professor believe that Ganesha
is not “widely worshipped” in Kerala. And then it struck me — perhaps I had
been misled all these years into believing that ‘Ganapathy’
is one of Ganesha’s several names!

At this point I decided that nourishment was required to fortify me
to read the rest of the essay. Before I placed my order though, I took a few
moments to toast the Professor for one of his inferences. He was on to
something when he wrote: “Along the roads are
posters of Ganesha, surrounded by saffron flags... Thus is the Shiva Sena
announcing its presence in Kerala.”

In Thiruvananthapuram, over the past decade or so, Ganesha Chaturthi has evolved from a relatively low-key festival
into a big, public celebration, with large Ganesha idols in temporary,
road-side shrines and a procession to immerse the idols in the sea after 10
days of festivities. And yes, the Shiv Sena is possibly a major backer of this
transformation. But is this cause for concern? I suspect not. For the Ganesha
you encounter in Thiruvananthapuram is still a benevolent, lovable avatar.

As I munched on some nibbles from Hotel Kavitha, my neighbourhood
eatery, I learnt that the Professor had been struck by “the large number of vegetarian restaurants” in
Thiruvananthapuram. So much so that he actually concluded: “While the local
restaurants serving beef curry and appams
also exist, they are clearly in a minority.” So astounding was this assessment
about the sorry state of non-vegetarian cuisine in the city that I almost
choked on my chicken kotthu parotta.

Yes, there are lots of vegetarian restaurants in the city.
And yes, we enjoy the dosas and iddlis, puttu and kadala, chappathi and gobi 'manjoori' they dish out. But we love biryani, beef roast, fish
curry, chilly chicken, chicken fry, shwarma
and all those other delicious dishes that involve animals that were once alive,
just as much.

Once again, I found myself wondering why! Why hadn’t the
Professor spotted the scores
of restaurants in
Thiruvananthapuram, at various price points, that cater to our need for meat.
In fact, if he’d ventured on to the city’s streets after sundown, he would have
found it tough to dodge the ‘thattukadas’ that own the night with some of the
best non-vegetarian cuisine in the city.

And for all the ‘arya’ named veggie restaurants that the
Professor spotted, he appears to have missed the ones with ‘arul’, ‘saravana’
or ‘udupi’ worked into their names. This isn’t the “North Indian-Hinduisation
of India” he believes it to be. It’s just clever restaurateurs trying to
leverage the power of strong restaurant brands like Tamil Nadu’s Saravana Bhavan
and Thiruvananthapuram’s own Ariya Nivas, which has been around for decades.

By now I found myself wondering whether the Professor had actually visited
the city I live in. I know that residents often tend to overlook the familiar
and that it is the visitor or outsider who notices things we take for granted.
Yet, what was illuminating about the Professor’s essay was that he seemed to zero-in
on some things, but was oblivious of other things that are equally, if not
more, visible.

Let’s say I, like the Professor, had returned to Thiruvananthapuram
after 30 years. What I’d probably notice is that so many men, let’s say ‘84 per
cent’, seem to have eschewed mundus for
trousers and jeans. But not the Professor, who was more struck that “The proportion of Mallu men without
moustaches seems to have reached an unprecedented two per cent.”

Similarly, I’d notice the diversity of the clothes that women in the
city now wear — more salwars, churidars, skirts and jeans. The Professor,
though, declares: “Strikingly almost all Hindu women now
wear bindis — hardly anyone did earlier — and a shockingly high proportion wear
sindoors …” I don’t know about sindoor, but I did wonder how the
Professor concluded that “all Hindu women” in the city wear bindis. I, for one,
know many who don’t, just as I know many Christian women who do.

I empathise with the Professor’s discomfort at having to
remove his footwear to enter the Sree Chitra Art
Gallery and the Kuthira Malika Palace Museum
(which he mistakenly calls the “museum of the Sri
Chitra Thirunal Palace”). I couldn’t share his distress at this practice
though, since I believe the ban on footwear in both institutions is about
protecting their rather fragile, old floors. And we should try to take care of
our heritage, shouldn’t we?

As I worked my way towards the end of the Professor’s essay, I remembered
the paragraph I’d skimmed over at the beginning. So I returned to the lead to read
about the “thick lush greenness everywhere” that
the Professor saw from his seventh-floor hotel room. Something I won’t quibble
with — Thiruvananthapuram is certainly greener than many other Indian cities,
with fewer high rises marking its skyline.

But then, the good Professor gave me another jolt, declaring
there are “Hardly any high
rises, an occasional mosque, temple or church rising above the green.” This is
a bit of a stretch. From my seventh floor apartment it’s not “an occasional
mosque, temple or church rising above the green” I see, but regular lines of apartment
towers and commercial buildings sprouting out of the green to the north, south
and west. And yes, the eastern reaches of the city are relatively greener, but
even there I spot more concrete fingers breaking through the green every few
months.

The Professor’s next observation, though, was a sucker-punch. “But not that many apartment blocks,” he wrote, “Unlike
Bangalore, the ones that have come up are not named Malibu Towers or
Sacramento, but Revi Apartments.” While he is right
that Thiruvananthapuram has fewer apartment complexes than Bangalore, not all
of them are named like the ‘Revi Apartments’ he encountered. On one stretch of
road I know rather well are a ‘Melody’, ‘Symphony’, ‘Alpine Heights’ and ‘Marigold’.
And elsewhere in the
city you’ll find a ‘Wimbledon’, ‘Carlton’, ‘Tivoli’, ‘Swiss Town’, ‘Kingswood’
and ‘Mayfair’. The Professor is spot-on about one thing though — there’s no Malibu Towers or Sacramento in Thiruvananthapuram. Yet.

And no, the old Gods haven’t fled. They’ve just retreated to the
shadows to allow the new demi-Gods their time to Trend or be Liked.

Friday, July 25, 2014

A shorter version
is in this month’s Second Anniversary issue of National Geographic Traveller India. The published piece is not on the Nat Geo website, so there’s no link to
it. So pick up the issue.

“The boat service
is dying out, you know,” says Raju, the driver of the autorickshaw I am in.
We’re careening through the pre-dawn darkness of Kottayam in his auto, heading
towards the “boat station” at Kanjiram. I’ve just told him that I plan to take
a public ferry from Kanjiram to Alappuzha on Kerala’s coast.

“With more roads
and bridges, there aren’t many takers for the ferry. It’s quite slow, you
know,” he explains, perhaps perplexed by my interest in the ferry. But when I
tell him that I’m a writer, he exhales in understanding as though all is
revealed.

As dawn breaks,
Raju drops me off at the Kanjiram jetty, an asbestos-roof shed with a small
concrete pier. It is the terminus for the Kerala State Water Transport Department’s daily Kottayam-Alappuzha boat service.

The first
departure of the day is at 7.15 a.m., although timings can change if a boat has
been sent for repairs. I’m rather early, so I sit on a ledge and study the
ferry. This is no elegant creation of wood, glass and metal, but a squat,
wooden workhorse that looks like it’s been around for a while. Noticing me on
the pier, the ferry’s crew invites me on board and tells me to make myself at
home. I pick a seat in the prow and wait.

A cat anticipating breakfast

Today, houseboats
prowl Kerala’s backwaters, that intricate, interconnected maze of rivers,
lakes, and canals that spread across Kottayam, Alappuzha, Kochi, and Kollam. A
while ago though, these waterways were the liquid highways connecting large
parts of Kerala and ferries were the region’s mass rapid transit systems,
linking inland trading centres like Kottayam with Alappuzha on the coast. In A History of Travancore published in
1878, P. Shangoonny Menon, scholar and official in the government of
Travancore, writes how in the 1750s: “Several canals were opened to facilitate
and extended communication from the back-water to the new town of Alleppey
(Alappuzha).”

My interest in the
ferry though is personal: I’ve heard older friends and family talk about
running errands, or commuting to work on it. As one friend put it, “The ferry
was my physical link to the outside world.” With the evolution of faster modes
of transport, public ferries may no longer be very popular, but they’re still a
window into the region; a window I wanted to open.

I’m woken from my
reverie by the voices of people trickling on board. Several carry plastic sacks
bulging at the seams; others are armed with fishing rods and nets or farm
implements. Almost everyone seems to have a newspaper. Most passengers seem to
be regulars; greetings are offered and gossip exchanged. A few choose a seat
and dive into their newspapers, while others swap tales about farm workers
playing truant. And then, with a toot or two, we’re off.

The glistening 'blackwaters' against the sun

It’s a beautiful
early summer morning, the sun is still a baby and there’s a cool breeze. Along
the waterways people are beginning their day: brushing teeth, washing clothes
and utensils; cleaning fish, and mending nets. We pull up by a makeshift pier
for the crew to fix a mechanical issue. A fishmonger’s boat is docked nearby
and a passenger makes use of this unscheduled stop to inspect his catch. She returns
to the ferry triumphant, a handful of fish wrapped in newspaper.

As the canal opens
out into the Vembanad Lake it’s easy to see why Kerala’s backwaters lure people
from across the world. I feel like I’m in the middle of the perfect postcard,
with green fields that stretch to the horizon, flocks of birds wheeling
overhead, battalions of coconut trees guarding the banks, and lotuses blooming
in water tinged gold by the rising sun. It’s all rather intoxicating.

We pass churches,
mosques, temples, and houses in almost every colour of the rainbow — bright
hues of violet, indigo, green, and orange. There are “cool bars” and “fish
centres” and more mundane tea shops, hotels and Ayurveda centres that promise
“relaxing” massages. For a while, we’re escorted by a squadron of ducks. Like
an elephant, the bulk of a houseboat emerges from the mist, a film song booming
from an extra-large telly on its deck.

The boat putters
along, zigzagging across the water to pick up or drop off passengers. Some
jetties are crumbling concrete slabs that seem to be in the middle of nowhere;
at one, a dog greets a man as he steps off the boat and they head off into the
distance.

A cheerful 'cool bar' and 'fish centre'

I observe the
people on board. There aren’t too many of us, only about 30. In the row of
seats right behind me a tourist from Germany and a commuter talk about cameras
and lenses; the conversation then veers to toddy tapping. The aroma of sambar
and warm idlis wrapped in banana leaves wafts across the boat. My stomach lets
out a low growl in response: A family has just opened its breakfast pack.

As we get closer
to Alappuzha, the action picks up. The waterways get busier and more people are
waiting to board the ferry at each stop. At one jetty a small gaggle of
scrubbed, giggling schoolboys gets on. They head to the prow, prop themselves
on the sills, and watch me scribble in my notebook. They begin a discussion
about why this saipu or “foreigner”
is writing notes. When I join the conversation in Malayalam, there are
half-embarrassed smiles around.

Soon, the boat is
as crowded as the Metro at rush hour. And suddenly, we’re in Alappuzha town
inching through water hyacinth and trash towards the main boat station. It’s a
little after 9.30 a.m. and there’s a small crowd waiting to board the ferry on
it’s return trip.

I’ve had a lovely
morning on the backwaters for just Rs 16. As I head away from the crowded
jetty, it strikes me that the ferry’s days of glory may perhaps be over, but it
still matters to many people in the region.
And that’s just the way it should be.

The Vitals

A one-way
Kottayam-Alappuzha trip on the Kerala State Water Transport Department’s ferry
usually takes a little over two hours and costs about Rs 16 depending on the
route.

The ferry terminus
in Kottayam is currently at Kanjiram, about 9 km from the town centre. In
Alappuzha, the terminus is in the heart of the town.

There are several
trips a day: The first scheduled Kanjiram (Kottayam)-Alappuzha trip is at 7.15
am, the last at 5.45 pm. The first Alappuzha-Kanjiram boat is at 7.30 am, the
last at 5.15 pm.

Timings can change
so it’s best to check with either the station master at Kottayam (+91-94000-50371) or Alappuzha (+91-94000-50324
/ +91-477-2252510)

There are mobile
phones on the Kottayam-Alappuzha ferries (+91-94000-50372/+91-94000-50373),
though the crew may not answer while the boats are running.

There are no restrooms on the ferries and you’ll have to carry your own
refreshments.

The Water Transport Department also operates ferries from Alappuzha to
other destinations in the region. It
also runs the ‘See Kuttanad’ service from Alappuzha for commuters and tourists.
The first boat usually leaves at 5.30 am and a round trip takes about three
hours. A one-way ticket for an adult on the upper deck costs Rs 80 and the
lower deck Rs 30.

Monday, June 23, 2014

First, the book: Satyavati:Fault Lines, is an e-book by Karthika Nair. It’s an itsy-bitsy preview of
her forthcoming book Until the Lions
and is part of Harper Collins India’s Harper XXI series. Can be bought here.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

International
Museum Day is on Sunday. One of the great things about Museum Day, especially
in Europe, is the European Night of Museums. There’s more about it below. So if museums
are your thing and you’re in Europe this weekend, check out a museum or two.
The French site has a database of all the institutions that are participating
this year, from 30-plus countries.

On a cold and wet spring evening in La Rochelle, a town on France’s
Atlantic coast, I set out for a night at the museums. I was not daft to head
out on a museum crawl in such disagreeable weather, but I just couldn’t resist
the spirit of La Nuit Européenne des Musées (European Night of Museums). It
would have been hard to ignore the event for I’d heard about it from friends
and also seen an announcement in La Rochelle’s city guide.

Held on the Saturday closest to International Museum Day (May 18), it
is a one-night-only event when museums and heritage sites stay open until
around 1 a.m. In addition, the entry fee to many institutions is discounted, if
not waived altogether. Meant to encourage people, especially youngsters, to
visit museums and other cultural sites, the Night of Museums also includes an
array of concerts, themed guided tours, installations and other special events
at participating institutions.

Created by France’s Ministry of Culture in 2005, the European Night of
Museums is now a continent-wide celebration with institutions from Spain,
Italy, Belgium, Romania, Moldova, the UK and other countries taking part. In
the UK though it’s called Museums at Night and is spread over several days.

Graffiti on the walls of the Lantern Tower

On that evening in La Rochelle, it seemed as if half the town was
participating in the event. As I discovered, queues at the more popular museums
and monuments can be long. So at the Lantern Tower, once a lighthouse,
watchtower and prison, it took me about half an hour to get in. The wait,
though, was worth it, particularly for the centuries-old graffiti etched onto
the tower’s walls by the Dutch,
English and French prisoners who have passed through its dungeons.

At my last stop for the night, the La Rochelle Museum of Protestant
History letters, documents and engravings offered me a fascinating glimpse of
the town’s past as a 16th Century Protestant stronghold in Catholic
France. And as I explored the museum’s collection, it struck me that Night of
Museums is the perfect time to explore the smaller institutions, which are
usually less crowded but equally captivating.

Monday, February 3, 2014

It was a pleasure to encounter Colonel Imtiaz Afridi on pages of The
Rataban Betrayal. It was also very personal for me; it was almost like bumping
into the many wonderful soldiers who are so much a part of some of my earliest
memories. I really do hope we get to see more of the Colonel.

Slightly different versions of the review are in this month’s The Hindu Literary Review — the version in the print edition is slightly shorter.

About 50 pages into The
Rataban Betrayal, I felt a little lost. I’d encountered over half-a-dozen
characters, yet it wasn’t very clear who they were and what they had to do with
the plot. It felt a bit like being in the midst of a bunch of threads floating
in the wind.And then, with great mastery, Stephen Alter started weaving those
strands in the wind into an interesting story and it all began to make sense.
Well, almost; for like all good thrillers, the book saves a twist or two for
the end. Weaving tales is, of course, what Alter does rather well. He’s the
author of 14 books, including five works of non-fiction.Much of the action in The
Rataban Betrayal is in Mussoorie and its satellite neighbourhood Landour.
The murder of an American missionary, who’s also a CIA agent, and the killing
of a couple of Indian guards on the border with Tibet stir things up in the
town. Both the Indian and US intelligence establishments are sufficiently
perturbed by these incidents to send undercover operatives to Mussoorie to
investigate. The Indian and American agents eventually join forces under the
direction of the wheelchair-bound Colonel Imtiaz Afridi. Retired army officer,
former mountaineer, strategic affairs expert and spy master, Afridi oversees
the covert investigation from his high-tech HQ — the shadowy, army-run
Himalayan Research Institute. Together, the two agents and Afridi discover that
the murders are part of a larger conspiracy with links to the Colonel’s past.Alter has lived in Mussoorie for years and his insider’s view adds
heft to the book. What also comes through is his knowledge of and deep
affection for the Garhwal Himalayas and the people who live there. The plot moves quickly, like being in a fast car with an expert
driver who knows just where he wants to go. The writing flows and is evocative
and descriptive for the most, with the occasional dash of humour. I was
especially taken by the description of the chauffer-driven, grey Ambassador
with James Bond-ish accessories in which ‘Bogart’, a Delhi-based American
spook, travels. The extent to which a work of fiction reflects reality is flexible.
As Alter writes in the ‘author’s note’, while many of the historical and
cultural references are based on reality, the narrative is not a factual
rendering of events or contextual details. Yet, two things about the plot
nagged me.First, the Himalayan Research Institute comes across as a sort of
Indian equivalent of the US National Security Agency, able to keep an
electronic eye on India’s northern borders. While it’s safe to assume that
India’s electronic intelligence expertise has blossomed in recent years, the
institute’s all-seeing capabilities seem a bit much. And second, Alter talks about how the Dalai Lama is protected by the
SPG. My understanding is that India’s Special Protection Group (SPG) only
protects the Prime Minister, former Prime Ministers and their immediate
families. Of course, these are relatively minor quibbles. More problematic is
the characterisation of the Indian and American operatives. While I understand
that both agents are primarily supposed to be intelligence analysts, I wondered
why they were chosen for field ops given the rather elementary mistakes they
made. In fact, during the denouement in the hills, the two almost muck it up.
What saves the day is Colonel Afridi’s foresight. Afridi is, in fact, the book’s high point, its real hero — wise,
decisive, loyal, hard as nails, but with his heart in the right place. He’s so
much the hero, that I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a sequel in the works. I
know I’d love to read another Afridi adventure and so I suspect, would most
readers.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

‘A community of
mortals’: a headline written to snare. The story it led me to, though, is so
powerful that I am delighted to have been snared.Alexandra Zelman-Doring’s tale of her husband’s heart
attack and the hours that followed is the runner-up in the Bodley Head/FT Essay Prize for 2013. It is
personal and universal, anecdotal and data-based. Above all, it is moving, but
also wise.Several sections
of the essay stay with me, but none more so than this line: “Borne on the brink of the music, it came to me:
human beings endure impossible things.” We certainly do.

PS: Another powerful read is Raghu Karnad’s essay on Indians who served
in the British army during the second world war. The essay, which melds the
personal with the general, was runner-up in the prize for 2012.

Friday, January 10, 2014

For a long
heartbeat it seemed as if all the light in the world had cascaded around me. It
was warm, benign light; just the sort of radiance you’d expect from a spiritual
experience. And so it was — my first ever lakshadeepam at Thiruvananthapuram’s Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple.Though I’ve
lived in Thiruvananthapuram for 25-plus years, I’ve actually attended only one
lakshadeepam, in 1996. And but for that feast of light, there’s little I recall
of the occasion.Celebrated once
every six years, the lakshadeepam or lighting of a hundred thousand lamps is
among the temple’s most important festivals. Preceded by the murajapam — the ritualistic
chanting of prayers in turns by a large group of Brahmins — the lakshadeepam is
one of those ‘experiences of a lifetime’.In A History of Travancore P. Shungoonny
Menon writes that the lakshadeepam and murajapam rituals were first performed
by Karthaveerarjuna, “one of the Kshatria King(s) of a former age”. The first murajapam
and lakshadeepam in more recent times were conducted by Marthanda Varma, possibly
Travancore’s mightiest ruler. While the first murajapam was conducted in 1747,
it did not end with the lakshadeepam; that happened three years later in 1750.
In the 264 years since then, the lakshadeepam and murajapam have continued
without a break, every six years.

The eastern approach to the Sri Padmanabhaswamy
temple during the lakshadeepam of 2008

Then as now, the
ritual is intended to bring peace and prosperity to the region and its people.
The murajapam involves the chanting of three Vedas — the Rig, Yajur and Sama —
in a specific cycle and also chanting the Vishnu Sahasranaman or thousand names
of Vishnu. The 56-day-long ritual culminates in the lakshadeepam, when a
hundred thousand lamps, possibly more, are lit across the temple and its
precincts.

Over the past
few decades, some aspects of the lakshadeepam have been tweaked to suit
changing circumstances. Electric lights have replaced some of the oil lamps
used for the lakshadeepam, especially in the outer regions of the temple.
Similarly, the temple is now lit not only on the actual day of the lakshadeepam,
but also for several days afterwards. And from this year on, there will be another,
rather visible, change — high levels of security. For this is the first
lakshadeepam to be held after it was publicly revealed that that the temple is the repository of a substantial trove.

What hasn’t
changed though is the essence of this unique festival of light. And as dusk
falls on January 14, the Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple will be enfolded in a very
special radiance.